About Me

Friday, August 04, 2017

Why I wrote another book

I guess I’m still learning how to use a personal blog for promotional purposes (as I’ve said before), so here I am a good nine months after the release date to let everyone know that I had another book published! Yessir, in November of 2016 Tumblar House of Los Angeles released my book From Afar, a fictionalized account of the journey of the Magi.

Wait – the Magi? Those three
guys on camels that hang about the edges of Nativity sets? The people
remembered on or about the Epiphany (traditionally January 6th)? Why
write about them?

First of all, because it’s been
a long-held dream of mine. I’ve studied ancient times, particularly the
Hellenistic period, and the sparse account of the Magi has always intrigued me.
The account given in the 2nd chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t
even provide names or number how many there were – it simply says “astrologers”
arrived “from the East”. All the rest of the traditional trappings, such as the
fact that there were three of them, and they were named Melchior, Gaspar (or
Caspar), and Balthazar , their countries of origin (Persia, India (or Armenia),
and Arabia), are all cultural accretions. In fact, there have been so many
legends and tales wound around the Magi that the “facts of the case” have been
nearly forgotten. People have looked at the Magi through the lens of salvation
history, assuming that the mysterious visitors understood things that were only
fully understood decades or centuries later (such as the fact that the newborn
Babe was in fact God Himself.) They forget that these visitors, whoever and
however many they were, came at the beginning
of the story, and were only seeking the King of the Jews, for whatever reason,
and however they understood that.

Thus, my purpose in writing
the story was to strip away all the legendary accretion and examine the Magi as
they were: scholars and seekers of wisdom of the early 1st century
AD who would have probably operated out of the assumptions of Hellenistic polytheists.
I wrote the story with an eye to addressing two main questions: what did these
men see in the skies that impelled their journey, and why would they wish to
seek the King of the Jews, anyway?

The first of these questions
has been the source of rich speculation through the centuries, but I chose to
use the research of Rick Larson from his site bethlehemstar.com as my
point of departure. I’ve learned that his conjecture is but one of several, but
since nobody really knows, I figured they were as good a guess as any. The
website doesn’t give the full presentation – you have to drop the $10 on the
DVD for that – but it’s good research, if you’re interested.

The second question is the
less obvious one, again because we tend to view the Epiphany event through the
lens of what followed: the life of Christ, His sacrificial death, and His
redemption of the world. In fact, it is in light of this that we see the
central role of the Jewish people in history (as He said, “Salvation is from
the Jews.”) But that perspective was anything but obvious in the 1st
century Hellenistic world. Sure, the Jews were ancient, but they were also
peculiar and made questionable citizens. Most importantly, in a world that
measured people and gods by standards such as political and military power, the
Jews weren’t very impressive. They barely had a homeland, had no king to call
their own, and were scattered throughout empires ruled by others. So this opens the question of why these
mysterious wise men (or anybody) would care about the King of the Jews.

So that’s where the story
begins: with three friends who are men of their times, but are each searching
for something greater. I address the
question of what they saw in the skies, and how that ties to the Jews and their
mysterious foretold King, and how the journey begins. I make use of elements of
the legendary framework, but the main purpose is to get the reader to empathize
with the Magi. The truth is, the cultural and religious atmosphere of the
Hellenistic period had many parallels to our own. People were making up their
own morality and using whatever gods they could find to justify it, violence
and other immorality were common, cynicism was rampant (in fact, the original Cynics
were a Hellenistic school of philosophy), and politics was seen as the most
important thing. I admit: it is an adventure story (because I love writing
adventure stories), but I try to flesh out the humanity of these searcher and
those who travel with them. They encounter many dangers during the journey, because
the Hellenistic times were dangerous, and each has an opportunity to turn aside
from the quest, but they all stay true until the end.

The trickiest part of the
whole story was the encounter of the Magi with the Holy Family in Bethlehem.
Since this has been the subject of so much bad art over the years, I wanted to
avoid syrupy sentimentalism, yet still wanted to retain the spirit of reverence
that would have been part of the unexpected meeting. I tried to convey a spirit
of “slow uncovering”, as the Magi even approach the door of the hut with mixed
feelings (“Has the House of David fallen so far as this?” one muses), yet once
they’re inside and meet Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus, they find their
questions answered and a greater wonder than even their wildest imaginings. I
hope I conveyed both the humanity and holiness of the Holy Family, as well as
both the curiosity and reverence of the Magi.

The book was reviewed at the CatholicUnderground and at Martha’s Bookshelf.
There was an article run in the Michigan
Catholic,
which is more about me as an author than about the book. It is fiction, so if
you’re looking for scholarly research about who the Magi might actually have
been, you’ll have to wait for Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s upcoming book on the topic (which is excellent, and I will review here when it’s
released.) It is available on Amazon and at the Tumblar House website.

My greatest hope for the book
is that modern readers will identify with the Magi and their search – what they
lacked, what they hoped to find, and how much it cost them to find it. If
anyone is encouraged in their personal quest by the story, then I will have
achieved my goal.